


When I Grow Older Who Will Be By My Side?

by Insertpoetryhere



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: F/M, Gen, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Haunting, He misses his boy, I wrote this a month ago and forgot about it, M/M, just know that it’s gay, melchior is an ass but what else in new, the melchritz is implied but idk if I made it clear enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 12:57:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18521989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insertpoetryhere/pseuds/Insertpoetryhere
Summary: Melchior can’t escape the ghosts of his past. The strange part is he doesn’t really want to. As he grows older, he finds comfort in these apparitions...But it seems that one is missing.





	When I Grow Older Who Will Be By My Side?

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on the spring awakening discord in like January but then I forgot it existed. Anyway have a sad boi.

The first time Melchior saw Wendla after fleeing the graveyard, he had damn near shit himself.

She was sitting delicately on his bed at the inn he was staying at, carefully smoothing the thin blanket. When she saw him enter the room, she smiled and stood in a way that was very clearly not human. It was too smooth, as if nothing was able to provide any resistance. Other than that, she looked exactly the same. No deathly pale skin, no cloud of mist that followed her, just Wendla dressed in her favorite white dress that only reached to her knees.

Up until that moment, Melchior had thought that what he had seen in the churchyard had just been a dream, a hallucination from his grief stricken mind. But now she was standing right there plain as day, as if nothing had happened. It was either that, or he had gone mad.

Wendla must have noticed his distress, as her smile fell and she reached out to comfort him with her voice just as mellow as ever. “Hey, it’s ok. It’s just me.”

Melchior looked up at her, mouth agape and tears in his eyes. “Promise?”

She gave him a nod, gathering him up in her phantom arms and holding him close. 

If he truly had gone mad, in this moment he didn’t mind it one bit.

—-

Over the course of the next few months, Melchior had kept his eyes peeled. He’d grown used to Wendla, who would often wake him by opening the blinds and setting out something for him to eat on the table. She’d very firmly pressed herself into his everyday schedule, which often included urging him to get a job and discouraging any visits to their home town (following him there would run the risk of seeing her mother. She wasn’t ready for that).

Still, there was something missing. Melchior would keep an eye out for a head of messy black hair or a pair of fidgety hands, but it was always to no avail. He wasn’t there.

“Wendla... when you came to me... where you alone?” He had finally brought up the courage to ask one night. “Was he with you?”

She froze up. Her being dead was not something they discussed often. “... Moritz came with me. He is here, Melchi.”

“Where? I haven’t seen him, how can you be so sure?” He began to bombard her with questions, his eyes widening.

“I talk with him a lot. He’s doing well, I assure you... he’d just prefer to keep to himself.” She answered him carefully.

“Why won’t he come out?” Melchior asked, his voice quiet and not very fitting of a young man his age. “So I can see him?”

Wendla pursed her lips, looking back down. They both knew the answer.

It was because he didn’t want to.

—-

The years passed by far too quickly, as did the rapid urbanization of the city. Tall buildings seemed to sprout up from the ground left and right, and suddenly the apartment that had been newly built when Melchior had rented it only 9 years ago felt so old fashioned. 

Wendla was a fan of these changing times, as she enjoyed watching the hems of the ladies dresses get shorter and shorter while she joked that she was finally in fashion.

She did this so often that passerby’s had started to ask Melchior if he had a daughter. His favorite response to this was to give them a strange look and shake his head.

“No, of course not!” He’d answer with a laugh. “I’ve never even been married!” 

It scared the hell out of people, making them convinced that the home was haunted and decide to try and figure out who had died there.

He secretly hoped someone would ask him if he had a son as well. One with a thin face, unruly hair, and who enjoyed gazing out the window at the ducks in the pond across the street.

No one ever did.

He’d only ever tried to reach out to Moritz once. He had made one of his friend’s favorite meals for dinner, and left an extra plate out for him as a peace offering. He could have sworn he heard a soft chuckle and a quiet, shaken voice whisper “Melchi, you know I can’t eat that.”

But he still saw nothing, and the next morning the plate still remained untouched.

“Just give him time.” Wendla would say. “He’ll come around.”

But it didn’t seem like he would.

—-

“Fuckin’ show yourself, ya coward!” Melchior screamed drunkenly. He’d gone 32 years, without so much as a hello. He was starting to wonder if he’d just left. Just got sick of watching Melchior grow older and live a life he didn’t even deserve to live. “Moritz, you absolute fool!”

It was a type of direct approach that he had never tried before. He knew it would never work. Moritz was gone.

He started to sob uncontrollably into his liquor, still screaming into the nothingness. “I miss you you piece of shit, just come back!”

He kept weeping, his screams, pleads and threats dying down as he let it all wash in. His best friend was really gone. It was real.

He opened his eyes, staring at the clear bottom of the bottle he’d been drinking out of. “Moritz... I’m sorry. Come back. Please!”

A hush fell over the apartment, and for a second, nothing stirred.

“... Melchi?” A shaky voice muttered, cutting through the silence and letting the peace shatter. Melchior turned slowly towards it, with the lack of grace that only a drunk could have.

Moritz was young. It was something he had always known, but he had never fully let it sink in.

Whenever he imagined Moritz, he was always around the same age and height as he was, as it had always been. As it was supposed to be.

But now, standing before him in the same clothes he had worn that fateful day to church, he looked young enough to be his son. It was so strange, despite the fact that it made sense. After all, he had only been 14.

Moritz took a hesitant step forward, a pale hand reaching out to rest on the back of Melchior’s palm. Melchior felt tears rush down his face as he let his head fall against Moritz’s small chest.

“Don’t leave me again... please.” He begged, crying against his friend’s shirt (his tears left no mark). He felt a cold hand reach up and tangle itself in his hair.

“Never again, Melchi.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry but also not


End file.
